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A delicate truth

2008. A counter-terrorist operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted on the British crown colony of Gibraltar. Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms-buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, a private defense contractor who is also his bosom friend, and a shady American CIA operative of the evangelical far-right. So delicate is the operation that even the Minister's personal private secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it. Cornwall, UK, 2011. A disgraced Special Forces Soldier delivers a message from the dead. Was Operation Wildlife the success it was cracked up to be--or a human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up? Summoned by Sir Christopher ("Kit") Probyn, retired British diplomat, to his decaying Cornish manor house, and closely observed by Kit's beautiful daughter, Emily, Toby must choose between his conscience and duty to his Service. If the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, how can he keep silent?Read more...

2008. A counter-terrorist operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted on the British crown colony of Gibraltar. Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms-buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, a private defense contractor who is also his bosom friend, and a shady American CIA operative of the evangelical far-right. So delicate is the operation that even the Minister's personal private secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it. Cornwall, UK, 2011. A disgraced Special Forces Soldier delivers a message from the dead. Was Operation Wildlife the success it was cracked up to be --
or a human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up? Summoned by Sir Christopher ("Kit") Probyn, retired British diplomat, to his decaying Cornish manor house, and closely observed by Kit's beautiful daughter, Emily, Toby must choose between his conscience and duty to his Service. If the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, how can he keep silent?

Responsibility:

John le Carré.

Abstract:

A counter-terror operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted in Britain's most precious colony. Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms-buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, and a private defence contractor who is also his close friend.Read more...

Reviews

Editorial reviews

Publisher Synopsis

I think he has easily burst out of being a genre writer and will be remembered as perhaps the most significant novelist of the second half of the 20th century in Britain. He will have charted our decline and recorded the nature of our bureaucracies like no one else has. But that's just been his route into some profound anxiety in the national narrative. Most writers I know think le Carre is no longer a spy writer. He should have won the Booker Prize a long time ago. It's time he won it and it's time he accepted it. He's in the first rank. -- Ian McEwan * Telegraph * No other writer has charted - pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers - the public and secret histories of his times, from the Second World War to the "War on Terror" * Guardian * One of those writers who will be read a century from now -- Robert Harris With A Delicate Truth, le Carre has in a sense come home. And it's a splendid homecoming . . . Satisfying, subtle and compelling * The Times * The perfectly paced, exquisitely cynical style that is le Carre's hallmark * Sunday Times * The master of the modern spy novel returns . . . this is writing of such quality that - as Robert Harris put it - it will be read in one hundred years * Daily Mail * A brilliant climax, with sinister deaths, casual torture, wrecked lives and shameful compromises * Observer * John le Carre has lost none of his ability in skewering the murkier foibles of the British Establishment. A tale of deception, greed, betrayal and ultimately, revenge . . . it is not until the last few pages that the full three dimensions of the plot are thrillingly revealed * Country Life * A writer of towering gifts . . . le Carre is one of the great analysts of the contemporary scene, who has a talent to provoke as well as unsettle * Independent * John le Carre takes us back to his favourite scenarios: Whitehall, the secret services, the gentleman's clubs, dodgy bankers, corrupt public schoolboys and gruesome American neo-cons . . . revelling once more in that imaginary world of secrets and lies that is le Carre's gift to us * Evening Standard * Tense, twisty, and driven by a melancholy insight into human motivation . . . deeply compelling * The Week * John le Carre is as recognisable a writer as Dickens or Austen, with an often-imitated but never rivalled cast of seedy spies, false lovers, public schoolboys struggling with guilt, and charming but immoral leaders of the brutal establishment . . . This is vintage le Carre and highly enjoyable * Financial Times * Thrilling, suspenseful . . . Fans will not be disappointed * Sunday Express * Utterly convincing characters, a tight plot . . . Wonderful * Sunday Mirror * Thrilling * Express * Choreographed with unsettling precision * Metro * When I was under house arrest I was helped by the books of John le Carre ... they were a journey into the wider world ... These were the journeys that made me feel that I was not really cut off from the rest of humankind -- Aung San Suu Kyi Plunges the reader into a modern-day thriller...Dad won't be able to put it down * Metro * [It] has all the essential ingredients of his masterpieces: the dilemmas of duty, patriotism and decency -- Simon Sebag Montefiore * Metro 'Books of the Year' * John Le Carre at his masterful best . . . nobody does it better -- Ben Macintyre * The Times 'Books of the Year' * Widely hailed as a return to the good old Smiley days . . . le Carre writes with laconic elegance -- Kate Saunders * The Times 'Books of the Year' *Read more...